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Well, economics offers a useful analytical toolkit to approach the topic and better understand the “whether, why and how” of CSR. This includes both empirical work as well as conceptualization. It should be noted that other disciplines should complement such insights created by economists according to their respective comparative advantage, e.g. sociologists may have to say a lot about social norms as drivers of CSR while political scientists may focus on the politics of CSR.
Furthermore, the empirical evidence points to the fact that by no means all firms engage into CSR, a fact that is in line with different preferences of consumers, workers, or ultimately even voters (when it comes to induce social and environmental firm behavior via regulation). This is often referred to as a separating equilibrium, i.e. the ability to parallely serve different demand segments through different qualities and pricing strategies, and - as argued in our paper - can be seen an actual advantage of markets over politics.
Then, the fact that the two strategic CSR channels most supported by the data are consumer markets and politics (private and public) truly suggests that although the execution of CSR is indeed in the hands of firms (not that few neither), its motivation and ultimate drivers are in the hands of many, namely consumers, voters and/or the broad public. In the end, strategic firm behavior and well functioning markets are able to translate preferences - whether it is the wish of a majority or minority of people - into according action, and often can constitute a viable alternative to government intervention.